


Lose The World

by MollyEverywhere



Series: Meetings with Death [1]
Category: No Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 08:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2614898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyEverywhere/pseuds/MollyEverywhere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short story about a girl who dies but lives in a world where the entity of Death (The Grim Reaper) exist but is used to scare children into not doing things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lose The World

**Author's Note:**

> This story is based off my story Hannah (http://archiveofourown.org/works/2124465), particularly in reference to the characterisation of Death. I would suggest you read that first before reading Lose The World but you don't have to.
> 
> It is also based off an excerpt from Three Step on the Ladder of Writing by Helene Cixous:
> 
> The dead man’s death gives us the essential primitive experience, access to the other world, which is not without warning or noise but which is without the loss of our birthplace. So it gives us everything, it gives us the end of the world; to be human we need to experience the end of the world. We need to lose the world, to lose a world, and to discover there is more than one world and the world isn’t what we think it is. Without that, we know nothing about the mortality and immortality we carry. We don’t know we’re alive as long as we haven’t encountered death…  
> \- Cixous, 1993, page 10

_The Heat. It’s everywhere. Need. To. Run. Help. I’m here. STOP!_

Anna woke up, took a deep breath, and screamed.

“Mum! Dad! Stop! I’m in here. Don’t burn it. Stop!”

It took a moment before she slowly realised there was no danger around her, just the burnt field that was one of many on her family’s farm. She stopped yelling. Everything was black all around her. Sooty, crumpled sugar cane stalks poked into her, lay on top of her, made her clothes dirty. She got up and looked around for her parents.

“Mum? Dad? Where are you?” she called out.

There was no answer. She thought they would be looking for her. _They must think I made it back to the house. I’ll go home and they’ll be there waiting. And I’ll take the road in case anyone comes past and can give me a lift._

She set off in the direction of the road. She crunched over the charred ground under the warm October sun, slowly at first, and then sped up as she knew she was getting closer. Anna reached the dirt track that separated her parent’s land from their neighbours and stepped onto it. The road, the uneven pasture in front and the ashy stems behind her dissolved into smoke.

“Aaaahhhhh!” she yelled in surprise.

She jumped back off the road in the hope – and because she was a little bit shocked – that the ground, normal ground, would reappear. She closed her eyes.

_When I open my eyes I’m going to be back home. When I open my eyes I’m going to be back home. When I open my eyes I’m going to be back home._

She had no such luck when she opened her eyes. The smoke remained just above her ankles, so dense she couldn’t see her feet when they were flat on the rippling ground, which seemed to Anna to be smoke itself. The smoke twisted around her legs, pulling slightly, enticing her to follow it to somewhere. At first she tried to kick out of the smoke, and run the opposite way, but a voice curls up to her ears from the smoke. It was barely a whisper but it was easy to her when there was nothing else around.

“Annaaa…”

“Who are you? How do you know my name?” Anna said.

“Annaaaa… Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

“How do you know my name?”

“I know everyone’s name, for everyone passes through here.”

“O..okay. And who are you? My mum and dad say I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

“Oh I am not a stranger, Annaaa. Follow and you will know who I am.”

So she trusted the smoke and let it drag her, the voice kept on getting louder. In the distance, she saw a mountain. The smoke was pulling her towards it. But it’s not a mountain. It’s made of smoke like everything else.

_What is it?_

“It is me, Annaaa. Hello.”

_The mountain is the voice!_

It turned. The mountain was a person. They had blind eyes, and a pale, stretched face just visible beneath the moving black of smoke which hung like a robe on them.

“Welcome, Annaaa. You took you’re time making your way to me, though that is to be expected from one so young.”

_What are they talking about? I don’t know who this is. The voice said I would know. I don’t know them._

She tried to turn and run again but the smoke held her fast. She glared at the figure – in her anger she forgot that it was blind.

“You said I would know you when I saw you, but I don’t! You’re a liar!”

“Annaaa? How do you not know me? I am the root of legends, The Legend. Do you not know the stories? The stories of the smoke wreathed creature that will come for you when you lose the world.”

_Stories, what stories? And creatures? They can’t be talking about those silly fairy tales._

“But you must know Death exists, Anna?”

_I do._

“I know. Animals on the farms close by die all the time. And last year one of the farm hands got crushed by a tractor during the harvest. People die and then that’s it.”

“You are innocent, Annaaa. You were fed neither truth nor lies and hence have no knowledge of me. I am Death, Annaaa.”

“You’re a liar. Death isn’t real it’s just a fairy-tale that kids are told to scare them.”

“You are right in a way. My story has become a way for adults to control their children, but it is they who are the liars. Twisting and changing my image until I am the thing of nightmares, the monster under the bed – the evil in the world.”

_Death isn’t real. They’re a liar. Tell them to let you go. Tell them._

“You aren’t Death! Death isn’t real. Let me go!”

“If that is what you wish, Annaaa.”

She felt the smoke let go of her ankles and, when she looked down, she could see her feet again. Anna took a step back, pivoting away from the creature.

Then stopped.

_How do I get out of here? I don’t even know where I came from and the field disappeared._

She turned back.

“You can’t get back without my help, Annaaa. And you can’t move on without it either. Listen to me.”

_Maybe it is Death but if it is…_

“Am I dead?”

“Not yet but you have lost your world. You lost it when you stepped onto the road that brought you here. You have a choice now. Two of the options require you to believe and trust in me. The third is easy to take but hard to endure.

“You can choose to continue to follow me and I will take you on into nothingness. Or you can choose to go back, and I will take you, but you will have to accept whatever has happened since you have been here with me here.” Death paused, seemed to be finished.

_They said there were three things._

Anna couldn't help but blurt out, “And the last one?”

“You can choose to stay here and wander the smoke like so many others before you. You can see them if you want.”

All around her people appeared, grey-blue wisps, more outline than anything else. They wandered, not looking at her, or at Death, or at any of the other wisps.

“So many people choose the smoke. The elderly and adults often choose to stay to wait for someone, content to linger until that person appears and they go together. But the children, the children stay out of fear of me. They’ve been taught not to trust me through those stories. So they wander forever because they can never trust Death.”

Anna watched as a little boy walked right by her, a few years younger than her, no older than five, clutching onto a small blanket.

“But you, you are different Annaaa. You do not fear me. You don’t believe in me. You must trust me. And make a choice.”

_I want to go home. I want to go home to my mum and dad._

Death reached out to Anna with thin, pale hands. Anna put her hands inside Death’s.

“Hold on, Annaaa. I will take you home.”

_Heat. It’s everywhere. Need. To. Run. Help. I’m here. STOP! It’s so loud. I hurt. Help. Mum. Dad. Heat. Noise. Make it stop. Don’t burn the field!_

Anna woke up on something that felt soft, which she assumed to be a bed. She heard muffled voices nearby, beeping and binging closer. She smelt smoke for the briefest of seconds, but then it was overridden by the too clean smell of industrial bleach. She tried opening her eyes but she couldn’t. She tried to sit up but it was like she was glued to the bed.

_Why can’t I move? I want to open my eyes. I want to know where I am._

The door opened and the muffled voices became clear.

“I understand how important she is to you, Sophie, but we can’t keep her here, alive, anymore. We need to be distributing hospital resources evenly. We have more and more people coming in every day,” said one voice that belonged to Anna’s family’s GP, Dr Seth.

“How many more refugee casualties did you get last week?” said a second voice, even more familiar to Anna than Dr Seth’s.

_Mum._

“Thirty-seven came in. Fifteen are still here,” Dr Seth replied. “This is what I mean. We can’t keep taking new patients and keep Anna on life support. The hospital has been just managing to do both for eighteen years now but with the new restrictions on power usage it won’t be possible.”

_Don’t let them do this, Mum. I’m alive. I’m here._

“What if I paid for the extra energy?” asked Sophie. “We couldn’t take your money if you had any, Sophie. It would be considered bribery and if we got discovered, the hospital would be shut down. We can’t afford the risk.”

Anna heard a soft thuwump as someone sat in a chair.

“I can’t lose her too.” Sophie’s voice broke. “Not after Jim disappeared.”

_Where did Dad go?_

“She’s gone,” said Dr Seth softly.

Anger flared in Anna.

 

_I’m not gone! Mum! Mum! I’m right here._

“It’s been twenty years. And I’ll have to do it whether you want it to happen or not.”

_Twenty years! How could I have been that long?_

Anna heard sniffs and shaky breathing. She heard small step coming closer. She felt a kiss on her forehead. Her mum spoke.

“Turn her off.”

_No, Mum! I’m here. Stop!_

A smoky voice whispered in her ear as she faced a rippling black mountain.

“Welcome back, Annaaaaa. You only have two choices this time.”


End file.
